


We are all monsters (The difference is in degree, not in kind)

by SoberFrost



Series: The Good Soldier Who Left [4]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Good Parent Talia al Ghul, Hurt/Comfort, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Jason gets an assassin mom but he doesn't know it, Lazarus Pit (DCU), Talia doesn't want to admit it either
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29406603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoberFrost/pseuds/SoberFrost
Summary: Jason and Talia are found family, even if neither of them realized it at first.Can be read by itself or as part of the series.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd & Damian Wayne, Talia al Ghul & Damian Wayne, Talia al Ghul & Jason Todd
Series: The Good Soldier Who Left [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2085054
Comments: 39
Kudos: 244





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason wakes up in the Pit and nothing makes sense.

When he broke through the surface of the Lazarus Pit, everything was _green_ and the pain was everywhere, hissing through every joint and crick in his freshly healed body. 

The sound, the sound was _unbearable._ It was an incongruent mix of a roaring anger and a much quieter, insidious hiss to _kill_ _hurt maim._ Coupled with the sheet of green coating his vision, nothing made sense as he scrambled to push himself out of the liquid and onto solid ground.

Figures came into focus slowly, first as shadows moving amongst the sheet of green, and then as human-shaped figures lunging at him. If they hit him he didn’t know, didn’t register anything beyond the fact that they were there and then they weren't. Did they let him pass through? Did he fight through them? 

When he looked back on this later, he couldn't answer those questions. Nor did he know how long he was scrambling through the compound before his first thoughts came into focus. 

_Where am I? What’s going on?_

His brain was too addled to supply an answer, but coherent enough to panic from not knowing. The green, before a bright green that coated everything to the point of obstruction, was now dulled into something closer to a filter. As he got a better view of the winding halls, his slowed down from the frantic run to a more cautious jog, trying to think through what route was best.

It caught up to him almost immediately, as someone grabbed him and all but smashed his face against the stone wall, his teeth rattling from the impact but his brain grasping desperately at the registration of a sensation other than the _thing_ clouding his mind.

“Easy, Jason. Easy,” a familiar voice whispered from behind. 

“B-bruce?” he rasped out, throat itching from what felt like disuse because _when was the last time I talked?_

“Rest, habibi,” the voice answered, and it wasn’t Bruce but _she_ definitely sounded familiar. Safe. Whoever she was, her words cut through the roar of the Pit, and he started to relax.

And then he started to remember.

_“Forehand or back hand?”_

The Joker's laugh.

_“Left, or right?”_

The warehouse in Ethiopia.

_“What hurts more?”_

The glint of the crowbar before it slammed down.

_"Tell the big man I said, hello."_

The taunts and the sick cackle and then the sound of the countdown and the explosion - _it was loud, so loud_ \- all of it brought back the rush of the green and the roaring noise. It was even louder than before and _who was this person holding him down?!_ _They could be working for The Joker._

That thought had him moving like he was a rabid animal, desperate to get out of their hold. 

“I’m sorry,” whispered the voice, and something pricked his neck. Whatever it was didn’t act fast enough because he was turned right around, slamming the woman against the wall and wrapping his hands around his neck and squeezing and - 

"Akhi! Akhi what are you doing?!” someone, someone far too young, yelled, and Jason whipped his head to the side.

There was a freakin _kid_ standing in the hallway. One definitely not old enough to have cracked double digits, but grasping a sword tightly, eyes darting back and forth between Jason and the woman - _Talia,_ Jason’s mind suddenly supplied - with a look of utter confusion on his face.

That face that was so familiar, like the name of a supporting character from your favorite childhood movie. Flashes of memories slipped before Jason's eyes, and he clutched his head in sudden pain, letting go of his hold on Talia.

_The kid was reading books to him. Sometimes in English, sometimes in Arabic, sometimes in other languages._

_The kid was sitting on his back while he did pushups, counting down from 100 and critiquing his form._

_The kid was using him as his assistant to help cook, and he wanted Jason to explain how to make an American recipe. Jason wasn’t, **couldn’t** talk to answer his questions. The boy answered them himself._

“Wha-, who are you?” Jason asked, every word moving his raw throat like sandpaper. 

The kid recoiled, as if slapped, and then lowered his sword.

“What, mother, what happened to him?” he asked.

Jason opened his mouth to comment on that, but the world was starting to spin.

He actually registered the dull pain of landing on the floor before his consciousness gave out. 

(Jason woke up in a cold sweat one night, years later, with this encounter seared in his brain. Months after he met Damian as Robin.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started writing the next installment in this series, and then got sidetracked writing more Talia & Jason centric things. This is going to be a few shorter one shots showing the development of their relationship from the moment he left the Pit to present day. This fic is mostly done barring proofreading and some writers block at a few junctions, so I expect to have all the chapters up inside of a week or two. 
> 
> As always, love hearing from you all!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason fumes, Talia machinates.

By the time Talia got to his quarters, the room was a wreck. Papers were strewn everywhere, ripped to pieces. The furniture had been smashed to bits, some of it thrown against the wall, some literally ripped apart at the screws. A mattress lay against one wall, stuffing spilling out of what looked like claw marks. The window besides it was also cracked, an impressive feat considering that it was impact resistant.

Standing at the center of it all was Jason, knuckles bloodied and likely broken. His Lazarus tinged eyes fixated on Talia the moment she entered, the first person bold enough to step in the room since he locked himself inside.

She looked unimpressed. “This was entirely unnecessary."

“I could give a fuck. I want _out,_ ” he snarled, clenching his fists. 

“And you came to the conclusion that throwing a tantrum would be the best way to achieve that?” she asked calmly, unperturbed by his hostility. Instead, she took the time look at him in full.

The growth spurt was an unexpected side effect of the Pit, but it was certainly unmistakable.

The Jason she was looking at was big, having grown several inches in the weeks since his Lazarus experience, and inhaling the food provided to him to accommodate the growing food. This Jason was loud, vulgar, and ready to fight any of the League's members at the quickest sign of provocation. How much of that was the scrappy Robin she remembered and how much was the Pit was unclear, but it was certainly different.

This Jason, the one who could talk and think clearly and _emote_ was all too preferable to the catatonic boy that she spent months caring for. Even if the catatonic boy had stuck to her side like glue after she found him in Gotham, and took to being Damian's silent guardian even faster.

In many ways, Jason was a contrarian.

He was finally well enough to understand the dilemma she faced with Damian, but a touch too unstable for her to feel comfortable springing that truth on him. Not when the mere mention of Bruce invited the Pit to overtake his senses. With his memories restored, his combat abilities went from rote memories of his training forms to full repertoire of the Robin training regimen. But he was uncoordinated and awkward in his new body, still getting used to his sudden increase in muscle mass and height. He was too angry and distrustful to be naturally relaxed in her presence, yet she still found herself singing him to sleep when the nightmares came.

And they were coming every night since the Pit, wracking his psyche with the horrifying details of his death. For all the misery she'd witnessed, it surprised her how much it disturbed her watching Jason suffer through reliving his trauma.

She told herself it was only because the nightmares made it harder to teach him the proper meditation techniques to rein in the Pit. 

To make matters worse, her father was growingly increasingly interested in Jason, in a way that unnerved her to the core. Jason was her...project. Not Ra's. She was thankful her father wasn't at the compound to witness Jason's most recent Pit episode.

Ra's might have preferred to see him go up against something stronger than his room furnishings.

“You can’t keep me here forever!” Jason barked, still angry.

“And I have no intention to do that. But it would be unwise for you to leave in this situation,” Talia said calmly.

“I want to find Bruce,” he continued, and wasn’t that ironic? Her entire reasoning for taking the resurrected Robin had been to return him to Bruce and curry his good favor, which would be critical in securing Damian’s place as his true heir. But Bruce had taken in another boy as a partner, and to her disgust - but not surprise - let the clown live.

And then, just as she was making progress with him, Jason found out.

“He _replaced_ me. With a shiny new model, a good rich boy that can do the job better,” he spat, the green surging stronger in his eyes. “He didn’t even avenge me. The bastard _clown_ is still alive.”

Talia resisted the urge to grimace in annoyance. Jason had slipped his League handlers yesterday and found a phone with an internet connection, and naturally his first search had been of Batman. It brought a headline of The Dark Knight and his newest Boy Wonder delivering The Joker to Arkham after his most recent escape.

The former Boy Wonder was _still_ coming down from the Lazarus episode, almost 24 hours later.

In a way Talia was proud: The damage had been contained to the room, and neither Jason nor any of the League guards acquired any broken bones in the process. It was significant improvement in a relatively short period of time.

“You must have better control over the Pit first,” she countered. She'd seen what the Pit did to people when it ravaged their mind and soul, and purposefully ignored the curling feeling in her gut at the thought of that happening to Jason.

Talia al Ghul did not grow attached. She was just protecting an investment.

“What good is control if you never use it for good?! What good is control when animals like the Joker get to live?!” Jason ranted, sounding almost rabid.

“This isn’t about you, or them,” she said, careful to avoid mentioning Bruce or the Joker by name and exacerbate the Pit’s influence. “If you leave in this state, with the Pit barely concealed, think of the danger you will pose to innocent bystanders?” 

“I won’t, I can’t-”

“What will you do to the first child you see in a Robin costume? Or if you see the wrong newspaper headline in a grocery store cashier line?” she asked, moving closer to him. “When the Pit takes over, it doesn’t distinguish innocent from guilty. Do you really want to take those risks?” 

“No, I _wouldn’t_ ,” Jason said, shutting his eyes to bat way the thoughts. But the scenarios Talia mentioned struck a chord, and they were starting to play out in his mind. 

“Not if you are trained," Talia continued. "But I’ve seen what the Pit can do to even the most resilient of men. Trust me.”

She had him, she could tell, and then those last two words lost him. _Trust me._ His eyes shot open, still green.

“Trust you? Like you trusted me?”

She noted that trust was clearly a trigger from him, but didn’t move back. The Pit fed on fear, and she wouldn't prove to be easy fodder. “Haven’t I?”

“What about the kid?” he asked. “The one I saw after the Pit, that you keep hidden from me. Or Ra’s? Don’t think I don’t notice you moving me every time the old bastard comes around.”

“What I do, and whom I keep you from, is for your own safety.” _If only you knew_ she monologued internally.

“My own safety? Isn't that a sick joke. You want to keep me safe? Get me the hell out of here!" Jason roared, and Talia pounced at the opening, her brain already plotting three steps ahead.

“I can take you to the best teachers the world has to offer. Those who can teach you how to hone your skills, and master this new body.” _And keep you far, far away from my father._

“I’m not interested in League training.”

“I didn’t say League training. I said I would provide the best teachers in the world. I assure you, the difference is noticeable.”

Jason pondered the offer for a few moments, but really, there was nothing to think about and they both knew it. He needed the training that Talia was offering but he couldn't get it himself, and he would more than happy to be out of the compound.

"Fine," he answered begrudgingly.

Talia had him on the way to his first teacher by nightfall.

...

He looked back on Talia's specific words months later, when he sat in his _Minka_ , nursing the wounds Lady Shiva had given him. Tomorrow, Deathstroke would be sure to aim right at those bruises.

Talia hadn’t lied when she said the difference would be noticeable, but he was certain she wasn’t being truthful about her entire agenda. Hazy memories of fingers running through his hair and soothing songs or not, he didn't trust her.

His training was going well. He was a killer now, something wildly different than what Bruce or even the past Jason could ever imagine.

He was ready. The Pit felt under control. Not gone, but not in the driver's seat.

Gotham was calling his name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minka = Traditional Japanese house, or at least google tells me. Proofread, what proofread?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason plans an explosive reunion. Talia has other thoughts.

If he doubted the quality of his training, making it all the way back into Gotham while avoiding Talia's operatives calmed his nerves. But jerry rigging a bomb unto the bottom of the Batmobile definitely did put any doubts to rest: His training had been _good._

So he was extremely disappointed when he felt the presence of someone a split-second too late, jumping into a roll and throwing a knife in the direction of the intruder. The knife clanged against brick, and he reached for his gun, scanning the rooftop for their presence.

“Tsk,” Talia said from the edge of his periphery, on the opposite side of where he'd aimed. “If I had wanted to kill you, you’d have perished before that dagger left your hands. You clearly left your training too early.”

“What are you doing here T?” he asked warily. He was wearing some light body armor, cargo pants, and a raggedy hoodie, but without a cowl she could still see his eyes roaming, looking for other League operatives.

“I could ask you the same,” she said.

“I asked first.”

“I see your time away has done little to dull your childish habits,” she remarked dryly.

Jason just scowled. “I’m in the middle of something.”

“Yes, I noticed,” she said, eyes traversing behind him and to the Batmobile. Jason turned, and his scowl only deepened.

Batman was returning, and behind him was the _Replacement, Imposter, THIEF_ shrieked the Pit. The bastard had the audacity to look so happy, wearing _his_ uniform and gallivanting around in his town. And Batman, _Bruce,_ was just letting him.

Jason didn’t even remember picking up the detonator, didn’t notice his thumb hovering over the button until Talia cut in.

“Is this really what you want?” she asked, voice slicing through the Pit's venomous whispers.

“Someone has to pay," he said, welcoming the Pit back. The Pit provided a comforting clarity, and it was _ok_ because he was in control.

(The Pit, he later learned, was a great liar.)

“And when the smoke clears, and the Pit recedes, I fear you shall be the one with the bill."

Jason literally growled, watching Batman and Ro-Replacement hop into the Batmobile. They hadn't noticed a single thing out of place.

“You don’t kill children. Jason doesn’t kill children,” Talia continued. 

“Jason’s dead,” he shot back. Dead to the world. Dead to Batman. Dead to Bruce.

“And yet you stand before me, alive as ever,” Talia countered evenly.

“I’m not the same person as before!”

The Batmobile roared to life, and a second later it was shooting down the street. It wouldn’t be long before the bomb was out of range of the detonator. If he was going to act, he had to act soon.

“I didn’t know you before," Talia continued, eyeing the detonator in his hand. She didn't like her odds at wrestling it from his grasp before he could press down. "Only after. And the Jason I know, the one I found wandering the streets unable to talk, was still fighting criminals to defend vulnerable children. The Jason I know spent months training with the most skilled instructors in the world to ensure that when he did use his skills, it was _him_ doing so, not something else.”

Twenty seconds until it was too late to pull the trigger. It would be so easy.

A literal push of a button.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not a hero, and I don’t believe in that honorable assassin bullshit the League pretends to care. I’m a zombie. A _monster_.”

“We all have a monster within. The difference is in degree, not in kind.”

Ten seconds.

“This is what I want,” he whispered. _Right?_ his mind asked, looking for that verbal confirmation that the Pit always seemed to supply in full.

Expect the Pit was quiet.

“What you want? Or what the Pit demands?”

Five seconds. His thumb hovered, but...the conviction wasn't there. The anger, the rage, the drive for vengeance, it was gone, and he found himself frozen by inaction.

 _Beep. Beep. Beep._ The Batmobile was out of range. The bomb was useless. The green was gone.

Jason slumped against the parapet. “They escaped.”

“No,” Talia answered softly. “You let them go.”

It took two weeks to sneak back into two. Another two to get the materials to build the bomb discreetly. Three hours to meticulously place it in the Batmobile’s undercarriage without triggering any sensors, and another three to wait for Batman & Robin to return. 

All for nothing. He was going to, needed to...To what?

Kill Bruce and some kid he hadn’t even met?

The Lazarus wasn't just quiet now. It was utterly silent, and he felt hollow. Sick. In desperate need of the rigid certainty it’s anger provided because without it he couldn’t justify _blowing up a kid._ He should have been, wanted to be, infuriated. Angry at the waste of time.

Instead he just sat there in the oppressive silence, inhaling the Gotham smog.

 _I’m crying,_ he realized, tears trickling down his face and onto the dirty concrete below.

Soft fingers carded through his hair, and then Talia was next to him and he was leaning into her shoulder and crying _like a damn kid_ and he couldn’t stop.

 _It doesn't make sense._ He didn’t want to kill Bruce, except he absolutely wanted him to pay for...for a lot of things that his brain couldn't handle at the moment. He certainly couldn’t go back to him. Couldn’t even look at pictures of him in the news without seeing the green of The Pit.

Eventually, he got a hold of himself and the tears dried. Awkwardly, he untangled himself from Talia, who was eyeing him with some unreadable, but vaguely familiar look.

It took him all of half a second to realize that it reminded him of Catherine but he shoved that thought away violently, because he’d already tried the whole surrogate parent thing and that wasn’t happening again.

Even if he still had dreams about eating ice cream with her and some...kid? He didn't know, and thinking too hard about that hazy time after he came back and before The Pit hurt his brain too much.

Right now he needed get Talia out of here before she got any ideas.

“Your lover boy is still alive Talia. You don’t have to stick around anymore.” She didn’t say anything, instead letting the words hang in the air. For some reason the silence felt like a scolding, as if he was a kid who had just done something utterly childish, so he added: “I’m not going back to the League with you.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” she answered.

More silence permeated. Jason recognized it as one of the first interrogation strategies Bruce taught him as Robin: _Stay silent, and they suspect will fill it with words._

Just because he recognized it didn’t make him immune to it.

“I’m not going back to your stupid training either,” he added, with more heat this time.

“You didn't finish your training under Lady Shiva. Or Deathstroke.”

“I've learned enough, and you’re not going to keep stalling me.”

“Stalling you from what?” she asked, and he appreciated that she didn’t even bother to deny the accusation. Cagey as she was, she really hadn’t lied to him yet. Not as far as he knew.

There was something to appreciate about that.

“Unless you intend to repeat the events of tonight,” she added.

“No,” he answered quickly, because the idea suddenly made him green in a way that had nothing to do with the Pit. “But I am staying here. In Gotham."

“For what?” Talia asked, and wasn’t that a good question?

 _Why?_ his own brain asked, because he was pretty sure Talia would pay him to go wherever in the world if it mean he wasn't going to blow up her emotionally stunted ex. 

But he blanched at the thought, the images of what he'd seen in Gotham in the last few weeks flickering through his mind. Gotham was still as infected as it was in his last life, if not more. If the few reports he’d bothered to look at since his return were any indication, there were even more crazies now than there were before, and what he saw of Crime Alley looked bleaker than he ever remembered.

And then there was The Joker.

The Pit flickered.

There was unfinished business at hand. Bruce still had to answer for things, just in a different way.

“This is home,” Jason answered.

Talia sighed, seeming neither surprised nor particularly displeased with the answer. “If you insist, then who am I to deny you? But I’m not leaving until I’ve seen your living conditions. I deserve to at least see what else you’ve done with all the money you drained from my accounts.”

He didn’t bother fighting her on that front, because after all, it _was_ her money. 

And when he saw the cell phone she left on the kitchen countertop, with only one number programmed into it, he threw it under the mattress instead of in the trash. 

Not because he trusted her, but because he didn’t fully distrust her.

Besides, he’d wait for her to call first. Not that she would, because he was just another pawn in her game with Bruce.

(She did.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No idea if Jason trying to blow up the Batmobile is canon or fanon but I'm absorbing it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce saved The Joker. Talia saved Jason.

Talia al Ghul didn’t fear death.

Death was just another fact of life, something people of success embraced as just the beginning of the next chapter of their life. A time for the legacy they spent their life building to flourish and buoy their name, until either time or the failure of their heirs eroded it away.

For the suffering, death was something to look forward to: A reprieve from their misery.

Al Ghul’s didn’t fear suffering. They inflicted it. They didn’t look forward to their legacy after death, because they considered themselves living legends. And if the Demon’s Head had his way, their legacy would climax when they ultimately conquered death itself.

Talia knew all these things as she dug through the rubble. She knew this and despite it, or in spite of it, she was rocked by panic at the thought of what she might find here. Of what the next turned stone would uncover in the remains of the explosive showdown between Jason, Batman, and The Joker.

(Because Jason was the only real _person_ there. The others, an animal and a detective, detached from humanity in very different ways, but detached nonetheless.)

Jason was supposed to check in every week. He had been checking in every week as he slowly built up his Red Hood arsenal, whether that meant quickly answering her calls to confirm he was indeed alive or exchanging sarcasm-laced conversations that occasionally touched on more personal details.

Sometimes when he called her in the middle of the night - and most of their calls were at night for one of them - his voice sounding hoarse and words shaking, their conversations would last for hours, spanning the most mundane topics. She’d discuss utterly frivolous details of entirely legitimate business dealings, or verbally walk through a poisonous concoction she was making, courtesy of instructions from Cheshire.

He always just listened, interjecting here or there, until his nerve seemed to come back and he'd start providing his own snarky comments. She never asked why she was the one he called, and he never explained. 

On any given day, she couldn’t decide whether to believe it was because he had no one else, or because he remembered things from before the Pit. Or what she’d prefer.

(That was a lie she kept telling herself. She knew what reality she preferred.)

She should have insisted on keeping him to that schedule. Instead, when he started to slip from it she made excuses: He was starting to make his more public moves as The Red Hood, and those reports were as good a confirmation of life as any conversation. He always called back eventually, anyway. 

One late call became two, and then three, but her father’s erratic behavior was starting to increase and she had to focus her attention on her other so- her _only_ son. It was an oversight that was easy to make.

That didn't matter.

Talia al Ghul didn’t tolerate excuses. She wouldn’t accept them from those underneath her command, nor would she accept them from herself.

 _This_ she thought, as she overturned yet another piece of charred debris _is the taste of failure._

She should’ve _known._ She should've dug deeper, grilled Jason more on what he was plotting. Foreseen _The Joker_ because of course Jason wasn’t going to let that go. Should’ve noticed the second The Joker escaped from prison, or better yet, killed him before he got the chance.

She did notice, with painful clarity, when reports trickled out that The Red Hood was wanted by GCPD for kidnapping the offending clown. She noticed more when Jason refused to answer any of her succeeding phone calls, but it was only after she hacked Jason’s cowl footage that she realized how far things had spiraled. 

_“It’s him or me. Decide! Do it! Now!”_

The insanity of the Pit laced every word, and Talia could only watch grimly, trusting that the so-called World’s Greatest Detective could see what was so blatantly obvious to her. 

(He didn't.) 

What happened next in that video made her question her entire contingency for Damian.

(And yet, between her father and Bruce, she knew Bruce was always going to be the best pick.)

“Lady Talia!” one of her operatives shouted, snapping her out of her trance. “Over here!”

There Jason was: His throat was cut open, and a significant pool of blood had left the wound, mixing in with the rubble around him. The League operative that found him - Hamdi, Talia’s memory recalled - cleared the debris off of him to give them full access.

Talia brushed Hamdi aside to treat the wound herself. She’d seen Bruce throw the batarang on the cowl footage but the angle of the wound meant that it was physically impossible for Jason to have looked at it without a mirror. This was her first time assessing the damage.

In doing so, that previous panic turned to the more familiar thrum of silent rage.

The batarang had nicked his jugular, but it wasn’t deep enough to kill him outright. By her estimates, he had to have already been lying here for ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Had the cut gone deeper by a few more millimeters, Jason would have died.

(If the lack of GCPD at the scene wasn’t an indictment of the local authorities, what was?)

 _This decrepit, disgusting, miserable excuse of a city. I should’ve helped father in his endeavors to wipe it off the face of the earth_ Talia thought.

“Nnrh,” Jason groaned, eyelids fluttering. 

“Jason! Can you hear me?” she asked, voice sharp. Unyielding to any of the inner turmoil racking her brain.

His lips moved to say something but started coughing immediately, aggravating the wound. 

“Enough. You could do further damage to your throat if you speak. Blink if you can hear me.”

A second passed. Then two. Finally, he blinked.

“Good. We’re going to get you out.” She turned to Hamdi. "How long for extraction?”

“One minute out.”

“And local authorities?”

“Five minutes before first responders are on site,” she answered. “Longer for the detective, as police reports indicate he is still en-route to Arkham Asuylum.”

“Left,” Jason sputtered, visibly distressed at the mention Batman. “T’save th’clown.”

“Stop, you’ll aggravate your injury,” Talia warned.

“Y’don’t believe me?” he asked, and then he smiled and it was all bloody teeth and dust. “B-beloved ‘f yors l’ft me ‘ere. To _die._ ”

“I told you to _stop talking._ ” 

“Extraction is here Lady Talia,” Hamdi said, and the soft whirr of the hoverjet signaled her words rang true.

“Leave,” Jason grunted. “I’m g’na die an’way.”

“Die, and I assure you I will dump your corpse into the Pit and bring you back just to kill you again,” she said, reaching for one of her extra-strength sedatives.

“Kind’a stupid T. T' m'ch work,” he mumbled, every garbled word aggravating his wound, and thus, Talia. She stuck the needle in a vein in his arm and emptied the contents. Behind her several of the operatives from the exfil team had arrived, moving to transport him as the sedatives took hold.

Talia didn't let herself feel any sense of calm as they loaded him into the hoverjet and started attaching him to the on-flight med-bay. His wound was bad.

The worst had yet to come.

…

Jason flatlined twice on the flight. 

Talia took him to Nanda Parbat, risking her father’s wrath because the League’s best medical personnel and equipment were permanently stationed there. It was there that she was told his wound was infected, exposed for too long to the filth of rubble and whatever toxins permeated in Gotham’s rogue tinged air. 

To make matters worse, Jason kept falling in and out of consciousness. Each time he woke up he looked, and sounded, more desperate to give up than the last. 

“Just let me die. It was ok. It was ok. Please,” he blubbered. “Death was easier than this.”

“Enough,” Talia hushed. “No child of mine will die such an undignified death.” She didn't ponder the meaning of those words until much later.

(What a cruel irony, to realize you have accepted another child into your life as you watch them flirt with a second death.)

“The Pit is his best option, Lady Talia,” advised the attending physician. A pasty, disgusting weasel from southern California she hand picked to treat Jason because he worshipped the exorbitant money of the League, not Ra's himself. Someone who wouldn't question Talia bringing a half dead boy to him and sequestering him away from most of the other medical staff.

“No,” Jason croaked. “I can’t, not again.” He gripped Talia’s arm, a desperate look in his eyes. “ _Please._ ”

“We can sedate him-”

“No!” Jason whisper-shouted, the injury limiting his voice.

Talia placed her hand over Jason's, looking him in the eye as she spoke. “He is strong. He will survive without the Pit.”

…

A month passed.

The latent regeneration of the Pit worked miracles. The only remnant of his near death experience was a thin, white scar running along the lower right side of his neck, carefully hidden by his jacket collar. Jason was as close to peak condition as he could get languishing in the isolated greenery of Romania’s Negrași Meadow. Far away from both Gotham and Ra’s loyalists.

 _Not for much longer_ Talia thought grimly, as she stood in the nippy Romanian air with Jason.

The parallels of the scene weren’t lost on her: Standing at the edge of a League compound under the cover of darkness. Handing Jason a backpack stocked with cash, passports, fake national IDs, and everything else needed to move uninterrupted. 

And just like the last time, she couldn’t shake the foreboding feeling that she shouldn’t let Jason out of her sight. Not when he was hellbent on continuing this collision course with cruelty.

“There are enough resources in here to get you anywhere in the world, though I’m not foolish enough to hope you’ll do anything but return to Gotham.”

Jason didn’t say anything, instead quickly glancing through the contents of the backpack. He could sort through them thoroughly later, but he knew better than to doubt that everything was there. When he looked up, Talia was handing him a nondescript smartphone. 

“This phone is programmed to reach me. Any time this number rings, I will answer unless I am dead or dying." He took the phone and looked it over. "You will check in regularly, at least once a week, starting a week from today.”

“Yeah, I got it,” he said nonchalantly, putting the phone in his pocket.

“No,” Talia said assertively. “You _will_ check in. Or I will come myself.”

Jason gave her a scrutinizing look. Everything in her face indicated she was serious.

“Ok. I will.”

Talia and nodded, and then stepped forward to give him a hug. The move caught him off guard and it took Jason a moment to relax his muscles. He lamely wrapped his arms around her slowly let himself melt into the embrace, taking in the scent of her hair.

(It was the same smell from his dreams. The ones that weren't nightmares.)

He had to choke down a child-like whimper when Talia separated herself from him, and he realized that this was his first hug since coming back from the Pit. 

“Be safe Jason,” she said.

He cracked a mischievous smile. “That sentence is an oxymoron.”

And then he left, and Talia was left watching his hulking figure disappear into the dark.

He’d be back in Gotham in less than a week, and she wouldn't let him slide through the cracks this time. She would stay on top of Jason, and Damian...Damian would be at her side. She could protect him and take on her father at the same time.

_I will protect my sons. Both of them._

(She did, but not in the way she wanted. In three months Damian was in Gotham, and she was throwing the opening salvo of her patricidal feud with Ra’s.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was the hardest to write out of the five. The next one is almost done, so I should have it up in a few days and it'll have an interaction that some people have been waiting for since the first story in this series. Shoutout everyone who has left a comment, you guys are awesome!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You could say Talia and Bruce have two children together. Neither would agree.

Bruce always liked to make a menacing entrance as Batman, where he could spare the pleasantries and enable his more brutal tendencies. There were no social constraints, no imperative to smile and act stupid to keep his cover save, and no expectations of what _Brucie_ Wayne would do to live up to.

Talia knew all this.

She also knew that neither Bruce nor Batman would have any sort of patience after their press conference announcing Jason’s planned return to Gotham, which is why she made sure to pack her social calendar for that night: She spent first hours of the evening at a gala hosted by some inane socialite, followed up by the more exclusive gala after-party being hosted by the same socialite at a different residence. After spending the appropriate amount of time there, she followed the crowd of most social hanger-ons to an even more exclusive secondary after party, hosten a yacht that extended until the last few hours before dawn.

At that point, she could have returned to her penthouse. A quick glance at her security alleged no breaches, but she knew better. 

No, instead of returning to the waiting clutches of Batman, she chose to ‘cool down’ and burn the last few hours of the night completing some actual paperwork for the company. Mostly unimportant things she could punt to an underling, but for the sake of annoying Bruce, she didn’t mind.

If he wanted to meet her, he’d have to come out in public.

So when _Bruce_ found her, nibbling on some Tabbouleh at one of the many extravagant eateries in the same skyscraper as her penthouse, she didn’t even try to repress a smirk from forming on her face.

“Bruce Wayne, darling,” she announced a bit too loudly, drawing the attention of both the waiting staff and the scarce patrons still present. “What a coincidence!”

“Talia,” Bruce said, putting on a pained smile as he moved to her table. His eyes were shooting daggers her way.

She didn’t get up to exchange the customary hug and cheek kiss expected of their personas, and he didn’t ask to sit down. Even billionaires could forgo some social politeness at 4 a.m after a night of partying.

Bruce wasted no time after sitting down, immediately leaning in to hiss “What are you doing?” 

“Company work. We don’t all shoulder our employment on our prodigal children,” she answered, the remark cutting in more ways than one.

“Stay away from him,” he growled, the Dark Knight already slipping out.

“Stay away from whom Bruce?” Talia asked glibly, not looking up from her paperwork. “You’ll have to be a bit more specific.”

“Stay away from my _son._ ”

“If you’re referring to _our_ son, I have every right to see Damian as often as I please. I made that clear to you when I put him in your care.”

(What she told Bruce and what actually happened were not one and the same, but no amount of wounded maternal pride would ever let her concede that. Ever.)

“What kind of sick game is this?” Bruce growled, and she could hear his grip tighten enough to creak the expensive mahogany of their table. “Killing the Joker. Taking Jason away from us, hiding him around the world, announcing him as your own-”

“I didn’t take Jason. He _came_ with me,” Talia hissed back, voice low. To the other patrons it looked like two friends whispering to each other as she worked on paperwork. “And that miserable impersonation of a human deserved to die years ago. I did your decrepit town a community service. Though it must have been a blow to your ego, to see your greatest reclamation project cemented as a failure.”

“I know what you did Talia,” Bruce all but spat out, ignoring her Joker tangent. “I know you kidnapped him from Gotham. Kept him with the League. Kept him away from me, from his home for all those years. Just like you did with Damian.”

At that, Talia did put her papers. Now, a sneer was starting to form on her face, witnesses be damned.

(It wouldn’t be Bruce’s first public incident with a woman anyway. Just the first one disgusted, instead of enamored, with him.)

“I _saved_ him while you allowed him to wander right under your nose, and then I returned him to you in better condition than you could have ever hoped to see had you found him by yourself. Your failure to take advantage of that is yours, and yours alone. Unlike you, I am not ashamed of him, and I won't hesitate to parade him in front of the entire world as _mine._ ”

“What you’ve done is unforgivable.”

“And your sins aren’t?” she shot back. The amusement of making Bruce wait all night had worn off. 

“I’m not going to debate parenting with _you,_ ” Bruce answered, his words coming out more than a little smug.

“This certainly isn’t a debate,” Talia shot back, forcing a smile back on her face even as her words were dripping in venom. She refused to give Bruce the enjoyment of losing her composure any further. “To debate you on this issue would require me to suspend belief and assume you have any sort of legitimacy here.”

“You can try and douse this in pretty words, but honestly, I don’t have the time or the patience. Listen to me carefully Talia: Whatever twisted plan this is, however you think you can manipulate Jason into part of your agenda with me, it won’t work. It never will.” 

Talia stifled a laugh. Of course he assumed this was about them, or whatever charred embers were left of that dalliance.

“Your arrogance blinds you Bruce. It deludes you into assuming my actions revolve around you.”

“Fine. Maybe this is part of your agenda with League. After all, you did kill your father,” he said, levelling the statement as an accusation.

 _As if you don’t know the danger my father presented_ Talia grated internally.

“His death was necessary for the protection of my children.”

“You don’t have _children_ . You have a child, Damian, who I will be keeping firmly away from you. Jason isn’t yours to claim., and you _will_ stay away from him. Or I will make you.” 

“Now your arrogance goads you into making threats you have no capacity to carry out,” she answered, voice rising a little. Not enough to float across the room, but enough to keep the attention of the waiting staff that were a bit too curious with cleaning the tables near theirs. 

“You can’t keep him from me,” Bruce warned, his voice low but the tone clearly hostile. At this point, the tabloids were going to print whatever they were going to print. “And when I find him, all of this is going to come to an end.” 

“By all means, go find Jason,” she answered, waving her hand dismissively. “ He’ll be in Gotham in a few days time, and unlike you, I don’t cage my children. If he wishes to entertain your presence, he will on his own accord.” 

Then she focused on Bruce, eyes cutting through his with something akin to hatred - and that was something he hadn’t seen from Talia before - lying beneath the surface. She continued: “But when he shuns you, repudiates you for your numerous failures, I warn you: You _will_ stay away from him. There is no power on this Earth or in this universe that will protect you from my wrath.”

Bruce matched her stare, rising from his chair and standing there for a few moments, before finally declaring. “This isn’t over.”

She let him have the last word.

(She knew Jason would reply for the both of them)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for everyone who has been reading this fic and following this series in general! I've got one more fic planned for sure in the series before I mark it complete, but this is fanfiction and nothing is ever certain. Thanks again for reading!


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